Slimmed-Down Wagner: Matthew Rye listens to a pair of recordings that give Wagner’s dramas new life in different contexts

Wagner’s scores have always been subject to adaptation to circumstances for which they were never primarily intended, from the concert arena to the fringe theatre, and the popularity of the music has spurred on a wealth of creative solutions for alternative presentation to the opera house and its resource-busting vocal and instrumental demands. These two new CDs reflect different aspects of this: a concert suite for orchestra and a paring down of the music to chamber forces.